Global Courant
A seven-year space journey came to a climax when a NASA capsule landed in the Utah desert and brought back to Earth the largest asteroid sample ever collected.
Scientists have high hopes for the sample, which landed on Sunday, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.
The 6.21 billion km (3.86 billion mile) journey marked the United States’ first sample return mission of its kind, the US space agency said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
NASA chief Bill Nelson praised the mission, saying the asteroid dust “will give scientists an extraordinary glimpse into the beginnings of our solar system.”
The OSIRIS-REx probe sent its sample capsule into a fiery, dangerous descent through Earth’s atmosphere, but NASA managed a soft landing at the Army’s Utah Test and Training Range at 8:52 a.m. (1452 GMT).
Four years after its launch in 2016, the probe had landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected an estimated 250 grams of dust from its rocky surface.
OSIRIS-REx released its capsule from an altitude of more than 107,826 km (67,000 miles).
The fiery passage through the atmosphere came in the final 13 minutes as the capsule hurtled downward with temperatures reaching 2,760 degrees Celsius (5,000 degrees Fahrenheit).
